Faster Than Sound
by TheDevilYouDon't
Summary: They don't remember the truth of what happened, who they lost, who was there. But after a phone call from a friend, memories start to filter back through. That's when they realize that everything they'd thought was a lie. Post-Chosen.
1. Chapter 1

**Just so you know, **_**Chosen **_**didn't happen like that. That's the whole point of this story. You'll understand a bit more after this chapter. This first chapter takes place on June 3****rd****, 2006 in L.A. Dawn just finished her freshman year at U.C.L.A. **

**Read on.**

The buzzing drone of voices coming from the television sitting on the white, scrubbed counter was familiar and Willow leaned back against the counter, sipping her coffee and allowing the noise to cover her completely. Her eyes traced the outline of the news reporter and the images of a parade of police cars that had apparently led the way to the police station earlier that morning after catching several drive-by shooters.

For a moment, she caught her face in a sort of grimace, as a brief déjà vu flew through her head. It was gone before she could even figure out what it had been about. Shaking her head, she looked up as Buffy walked in. Buffy yawned and waved before making her way to the refrigerator.

"I already made pancakes, Buff." Buffy looked up at the sound of Willow's voice and closed the fridge before making her way to the counter.

She ate silently for a few minutes before Willow nodded to the TV. "Did you hear about that?"

"Hear about what?" Buffy asked, but, because her mouth was full, it came out more as gibberish.

"Santa Barbara's crime rate has gone up just since last week."

Buffy swallowed and looked at the TV, her mouth dropping open as the reporter began to list the crimes committed just in those past 24 hours. "Oh, wow." Willow just nodded. "Thank God we picked L.A., then, huh?" Willow smiled slightly, but that sense of déjà vu came back before

_(how'd you three meet anyway?)_

she could stop it.

"Hey, breakfast?" Dawn asked as she walked into the kitchen, already dressed.

"Counter," Buffy said in monotone as she washed her dishes in the sink.

Willow glanced over at the younger Summers. "What are you doing already awake, aware, and accessorized?"

"Oh, you know, just got stuff to do."

"Classes? It's summer break." Her eyebrows rose as she awaited a response.

"No…not classes. Meeting some friends downtown," Dawn offered nonchalantly as she picked apart her pancakes.

"Would these friends just happen to be singular and masculine?" Buffy cut in, mimicking Willow's position and leaning back against the counter.

"Maybe."

"And safety precautions will be taken?"

"Of course."

"No urge you can't fulfill over a Bible will be acted on?"

"Never."

"Alright. Just…make good decisions," Buffy advised, before heading out of the kitchen and into the apartment's hallway.

"Right," Dawn said as she sipped her glass of milk. "Because I was going to smoke a cigar, get drunk, set something on fire, and stomp my purity ring into the dust."

_(fire makes dust)_

Willow shook the thought from her head and made a face at Dawn. "You don't have a purity ring."

"Exactly." She stood and set her dishes in the sink. "I promise I won't do any of the above, though." Leaning over, she kissed Willow's cheek briefly.

"Be safe—

_(Dawnie)_

-Dawn."

"Will do!" Dawn yelled back as she trotted from the room and headed out of the apartment, slamming the door behind her.

Willow stood as if in a daze for several minutes, eyes still on the TV as though hypnotized. She jumped what she would later describe as a foot as the phone rang, scattering her thoughts to the back of her mind.

"Hello?" she answered, setting her mug down, just as Buffy re-entered the kitchen, dressed. "_Who_ did you say?"

Buffy made a face, an instant of fright coursing through her veins like adrenaline. _Is it Xander?_ she mouthed at her in that instant, thinking that perhaps he had run into trouble.

Willow shook her head back, and then smiled in a slightly bland way. "You…_you!_ Hey, Spike, sorry, didn't recognize you. How did y—"

A memory coursed through Buffy's mind in a split second; _cold air, musty smell, being pressed against the cold wall, head thrown back, legs wrapped around someone's waist…__**Spike.**_

"—are you talking about? …no….I really don't recall…I'm sorry, but that's a little…yes, I'm sure you're not lying…what would that mean exactly?" Willow paused, holding the phone close to her ear, eyes closed. "Where?" Suddenly, her eyes popped open as the voice on the phone and she grabbed onto the counter with her free hand in order to keep herself from falling over.

Buffy rushed over and gently grabbed Willow's hand, wide eyes trying their hardest to read her friend's face. _What? _she mouthed, but Willow was already looking away.

"No…I can't make any promises…Well, _no, _I'm not sure about _anything _you've been saying! I'm sorry…We'll try…No, I'll have to talk to her about it…You know...?" Her eyes grew wide again for a moment. "Of _course_ you know Xander…Yeah, give him a call…No, she's here. I'll talk to her."

Buffy drew away a bit as Willow darted her eyes in her direction.

"Who? What kind of name is…_Anya!_ Of course…No…I remember a little…Thank you…No…I'll…_We'll_ try. I promise…Yes, I mean that…I've got to go…Okay. Bye."

Willow hung the phone up and set it down before turning to face Buffy, eyes not directly meeting their counterparts.

"What's going on? Why was—

_(__**Spike**__)_

-that guy calling?"

Willow shook her head. "I'm…I'm not sure."

"What do you mean you're not sure?" Buffy demanded. "You sounded pretty damn sure on the phone! What are 'we' trying to do exactly? Why does that person have to call Xander too? What's going on?"

"We've got to…" Willow trailed off, shaking her head again. "We made a promise. That's what he was saying. Something evil is back…apparently we've got to destroy it for good this time."

"What _evil_ can there be? Where do we have to go?"

Willow looked up then, a certainty crossing over her features for a moment. "Sunnydale."


	2. Chapter 2

_Faster than Sound_

_Chapter 2_

The silence never caught him off guard. It was the first thing he heard when he woke up and the last thing he heard when he went to bed. It was his muse, the only thing in his life that was certain anymore. It used to be simple when life was a chip in his brain, a band of idiots he followed around like a puppy, and the one girl that seemed to make the fact that his heart wasn't beating okay to deal with.

But now…now it was gone. All of it. The chip had been removed three years prior, the Scoobies were gone and she'd left with them. So his heart continued to be still and his life continued to have no meaning.

He'd buried her. After they'd gone and he'd stayed, he'd taken a shovel and carried her through the night to the nearest graveyard. There he'd dug the hole and put her wrapped up body in it before burying her. He'd even shed a tear, though whether it was for himself, her, or them he still didn't know.

The house where they'd stayed before the final battle lay empty where it was. He couldn't stay there, couldn't look at their things and smell them around him when he didn't know how long it would be before he saw them again. Instead, he'd moved into the new high school. It was large enough that he felt at home and he had enough food left behind in abandoned shops to last him for a long time.

For a while, it had seemed as though he could live a normal life in this abandoned town, wait it out without losing his mind. That was before, of course, the bad things started again.

At first it was just crime rates in Santa Barbara and other nearby towns spiking a bit. He didn't know whether the Hellmouth was spitting out the nasties or riling them up, so he'd just left it be, not even sure if there was any real importance behind it anyway. But then he'd started seeing things…crazy things he knew couldn't be there.

For instance, on his way back to the high school from one of the butcher shops he still knew had blood in them, Tara was in the park. And she was just sitting there, on one of the swings, looking at him. He'd smiled and waved before he remembered that she was dead. The moment he did, an open gun-shot wound appeared on her chest and she looked down at it. Their eyes had met for a moment and then she'd been gone. No trace of anything. Just…gone.

He had shrugged it off as a symptom of loneliness, perhaps a sign of psychosis. But when he'd opened the door to the classroom he slept in one evening, Joyce had been there, sitting in the hall, staring at him.

"Hi," he'd said, wanting to see if there was an answer.

There wasn't and she'd been gone before he could blink.

After that, he'd seen _her_ too many times to count. Never her whole face; oh, no, fortune was to unkind for that. He did see her hair and sometimes the back of her. She always seemed to be running away from him. Probably, it was better that way.

He knew that he'd have to call right when he first say _her_. He'd been following them for those past three years, keeping a tab on their phone numbers so that when the time came—it was never a question of _if_—he'd be completely prepared.

The first call would have to be made to _her_ apartment. No doubt, she would be the one to answer, so he'd mentally prepared himself to hear her voice before actually doing it. Even after all that time, he still loved her with every fiber of his being. But…to make that call was to commit murder. He knew they'd forgotten. He'd made sure of it before, in fact, so to tell them, let those memories come back, was like killing those innocent versions of them that he'd never had the privilege to meet. They'd remember and they'd never be innocent again.

So, with daring speed, he picked up the phone and pressed in the numbers.

**Just an interlude. Next chapter soon. **


	3. Chapter 3

"_Leave?_" Dawn repeated. She looked up at Willow and her sister, puzzled, a bit afraid, and then tucked her bare feet up and under her. The floor was cold. The whole _apartment_ was cold, despite the fact that the temperature had well broken the 90's earlier that morning. Apparently, L.A.'s idea of central heating was a lot different than

_(Sunnydale's)_

the place they'd used to live.

Dawn frowned, suddenly worried about the fact that all of her memory seemed to become blurry—or even completely disappear—once she tried to go back farther than three years prior. But, then Willow's mouth was moving and the muffled sound of her speaking filled Dawn's ears as Buffy nodded agreement.

They were trying to hide it, Dawn knew, but she could see the signs that they were afraid. They were sitting closely together, shoulders brushing at the slightest movements, hands clasped desperately between them. She frowned and looked down at the wooden floor. She hadn't seen Buffy this afraid since

_(before the last fight)_

her first day of college.

"Dawn?" Buffy's voice cracked her thought process and she looked up, eyes blinking stupidly as she desperately tried to remember the last thing that had been said to her.

"Buffy, we can't just _leave_. You _know_ that."

"We have to," Buffy told her simply and stared her down.

Dawn shook her head. "Just tell me what's going on. Why are you two so scared?"

"We're not scared."

"Really? Your hands always shake like that? You two always hold onto each other as if the world depends on it?"

Willow sighed and looked down. "I've been having memories lately. Nothing big…well, not until this morning. Small things, little thoughts that cross my mind at random times. It's weird…and…it's _never_ happened before."

"Me too," Buffy admitted. "And when…when you said the town's name…it was like a tidal wave. All these images were suddenly there."

"_What_ town?"

Buffy looked up and locked eyes with her sister before saying a calm voice, "Sunnydale."

All at once, Dawn felt as though she'd fall over and thanked the lord that she was sitting safely in her chair. Her eyes closed and she frowned, trying to stop her world from spinning. When she'd finally gotten herself under control, she opened her eyes and stared at her sister. "What? Why?"

Willow cut in. "It's weird how…I didn't realize till just earlier that…I haven't so much as _thought _about that place for the past three years. Have either of you?" Both girls shook their heads in response, eyes down, trying to think of something that would make sense. "It's like…_everything_ has been in a black hole or something—the place we lived, the things we went through, the people we knew. It's like having a case of amnesia so bad that you don't even notice it's there. Then when Spike called—"

"Who's Spike?" Inside, Dawn's mind started filtering through memories—

_(a loud thump of a hand on the table in front of her, a snubbed cigarette, grey, angry eyes, a promise of safety)_

-ones of blonde hair, gentle smiles and secret alliances.

"A guy who used to help us…with…whatever it was we did," Willow told her. "That was him that called me. He said, 'Hello, this is Spike.' And, it was like it meant nothing to me. He might as well have been selling encyclopedias or Elvis Presley records. After a few more minutes he said, 'From Sunnydale.' And when he said that it was like a door opened inside of me and some horrible light shined out and I remembered who he was. I remembered all of them, the others. All of that happened—"

She snapped her fingers.

"Like that. And I knew he was going to ask us to come."

"Come back to Sunnydale," Dawn said quietly.

"Yeah." She looked over at Buffy and rubbed her back reassuringly. Dawn's eyes shifted to her sister and her eyes grew wide at the sight. Never in her life had she seen someone so strong look so scared. Willow turned back to her and started talking again, just then, taking a deep breath as she gathered her thoughts. "Back to Sunnydale. Because we promised, he said, and we did. We _did._ All of us. You, me, Buffy, Faith, Xander, Spike, Giles. We all stood on the grounds of the high school and avoided one another's' eyes as we promised."

Buffy nodded in agreement, eyes glassy and distant. "We all stood there, in a circle. We stood out there like we were about to pray together, and I think a few of us did pray, silently and to ourselves. I remember I could see dark, grey clouds above us and they seemed so…filled with doom. And we promised, we _swore_, that if it wasn't over…we'd go back. And we'd do it again. And we'd stop it. Forever."

"Stop _what_?" Dawn cried, suddenly furious at the blank slot of memory that she'd lost and they could still recall. "Stop _what? _What the hell are you two _talking_ about?"

"Dawn, I wish you wouldn't ask. You'll remember on your own time, but, for now, please just calm down." Willow's voice was steady and sure and Buffy felt that, maybe if she leaned in closer, some of her friend's strength would rub off on her. Slowly, she leaned her head down, rested it on the redhead's shoulder, and closed her eyes.

Dawn shook her head. "Tell me the rest. What happened, what we're fighting, all of it."

Willow shook her head. "No," came her answer. "I think I could, if you wanted me to. Really wanted me to. Most of it, though, I don't remember even now. I'm sure it would come to me as I told you. I can sense those memories…waiting to be discovered. Maybe they'll appear on their own when we're with the others—"

"Do they know?"

_(Check it out. Brat's all woman-sized)_

"Spike called Xander after he called us. He said he'd call the others today."

Buffy's eyes scanned over her sister with careful worry, her eyebrows drawn low. "Dawnie? Are you okay?"

Dawn grasped her head and covered her eyes. "It's…coming back…" she managed out, squeezing her eyes closed as memories began pouring in with surprising speed. "A little of it…it's coming back now."

Willow shared a look with her friend, not surprised when she felt the other girl's grip tighten on her hand. "You'll be alright. It'll stop in a minute."

The silence surrounded them until Dawn's hands fell away and her eyes blinked, dazed in the sunlight after being in the dark. "I wonder if this is how a bird feels when it has to go home in the fall…it's almost like instinct. A deep-seated feeling inside…like we've _got _to go back." She paused and swallowed, averting her eyes to the wooden floor of their apartment. "What time do we leave?"

**Abrupt ending, but next chapter soon. Sorry about the wait. I'm so lazy. xD**


End file.
